John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (CD)

Originals Series Remastered CD in a Three-Panel Digipak

This is the 2008 CD of A Love Supreme in Universal's Originals series: the four-part suite remastered on a single disc and housed in a three-panel card digipak. The front keeps Bob Thiele's cover photograph and the Impulse! "Stereo A-77" badge, with an Originals strip down the left edge, and the disc is printed with the Impulse! label design and the original catalog number, AS-77. Inside, the panels reproduce Coltrane's own liner note, "Dear Listener," beside Victor Kalin's painting of him, and the full text of his poem "A Love Supreme," signed December 1964.

The quartet recorded the suite in a single session on December 9, 1964, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Coltrane on tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. Bob Thiele produced and Rudy Van Gelder engineered. Impulse! issued it in 1965. The liner note also thanks Archie Shepp and Art Davis, "who both recorded on a track that regrettably will not be released at this time." That session, the next day, is not on this disc.

In the note Coltrane writes that in 1957 he experienced "a spiritual awakening," and calls the album "a humble offering to Him. An attempt to say 'THANK YOU GOD' through our work." He sets out the structure himself: "Acknowledgement," "Resolution," "Pursuance," and a closing "Psalm," which he describes as "a musical narration of the theme, 'A Love Supreme,' which is written in the context." "Acknowledgement" opens on a gong and cymbal washes and turns into the chant of the title phrase, sung by Coltrane. In "Psalm" he plays the words of the printed poem on the saxophone rather than speaking them.

By 1970 the album had sold about 500,000 copies. In 2015 the Library of Congress selected it for the National Recording Registry.

Tracklist

1. Part 1: Acknowledgement - 7:42
2. Part 2: Resolution - 7:19
3. Part 3: Pursuance - 10:42
4. Part 4: Psalm - 7:02

Complete the Collection

Eighteen John Coltrane titles at Evergreen Vinyl, this one included: Blue Train, Settin' The Pace, Soultrane, Lush Life, Giant Steps, Coltrane Jazz, My Favorite Things, Impressions, Untitled Original 11383 / Impressions, Birdland 1962, Transition, Sun Ship, Meditations, 1960-1964, My Favorite Things: Coltrane At Newport, Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary, The Tiberi Tapes.